THE LEARNING MODEL
The Kennedy School’s hallmark is creative problem-solving through intellectual inquiry. Working in highly interactive teams, participants probe the complexities of many diverse issues confronting them and their organizations.
The program curriculum is centered on the case method pioneered at Harvard. Each day, you will prepare and discuss cases selected to provoke insight into a wide array of strategic management and leadership issues. Each case is a real-life situation that stimulates participants to think through problem-solving methods and possible solutions to actual situations. By investigating successes and failures of real people in real time, participants draw lessons relevant to their own professional experiences and challenges.
DISCUSSION GROUPS
In addition to your classroom activity, this program offers the chance to reflect on your own personal and professional experiences by working in small discussion groups. The small-group setting offers the chance for you to collaborate at a deeper level of problem analysis, sharing your own experiences in an effort to understand how to improve your performance, choice, and outcomes.
Some of the areas we will explore:
Internal Capacity
- How can you inspire effective, efficient, and fair public service?
- What are the options for developing organizational and communications strategies, improving productivity, and providing leadership using formal and informal authority?
Public Value and Policy Analysis
- What are the philosophical underpinnings inherent in making decisions and creating public value?
- How can you best utilize tools such as analytical methods, statistics and program evaluation?
- How do you create a public conversation about difficult issues?
Strategy and Political Management
- What are the most effective strategies for working with the press, community advocates, colleagues, and supervisors?
- How do you influence and manage external entities such as elected and appointed officials?
CASES
Some of the cases used in this program are:
POLITICAL MANAGEMENT
Case: Senator McGrail and the Death Penalty
This is the story of a young Massachusetts state senator who is faced with a dilemma about how to vote on then-Governor Frank Sargent's veto of a bill restoring capital punishment. Senator McGrail is against capital punishment, but after casting his vote that way on the bill and voting once to sustain the veto, he was inundated with criticism from his constituents. He now has to face another vote on the veto. He decides to take an unscientific poll. Nearly 70 percent of those asked favor restoration. The question, of course, is what should he do? The case most explicitly raises the delegate versus trustee approaches to legislative representation. But included here are also issues about how legislatures work and the range of considerations which could be taken into account in making this decision. The case has been used to focus on the following questions: Why run for office? What are the differences between elected and appointed office? What are the ethical responsibilities of legislators?
PUBLIC VALUE
Case: Cocaine Mothers
Early in 1989, prosecutors in Florida charged a woman with child abuse after she gave birth to her second baby born with signs of cocaine dependency. This case briefly summarizes the problem of cocaine use, the effects of prenatal exposure, and the legal issues surrounding the Florida prosecution. The case can be used to raise a variety of issues, such as the frequency with which disputes about policy are often thinly disguised, disputes about objectives and basic values, and the circumstances under which the state is justified in coercing the behavior of individuals.
POLICY ANALYSIS
Case: Swine Flu
In 1976, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control determined that recent cases of influenza among army recruits were caused by the same virus believed to be the agent of the 1918-19 flu pandemic in which 500,000 Americans died. The implications of the discovery were complicated by a number of scientific inferences about the flu virus, none of them ultimately verifiable, which held out the possibility of an extremely severe flu epidemic the following winter. This case examines the reaction of the CDC, the Ford administration, and the media to the discovery and is used to introduce students to the notion of decision analysis.
RELIGION IN PUBLIC LIFE
Case: Finding Black Parents: One Church, One Child
In 1980, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services faced a crisis. Over 700 black children in Cook County, including 69 infants, waited for adoption while the agency was unable to find black parents. Director Gregory L. Color, with his deputy Gordon Johnson, approached Father George Clements, a black activist Chicago priest in the Baptist community. From those meetings came One Church, One Child, a plan to use pastors of the black churches as spokesmen to reach the community. Coler and Johnson faced several hurdles as they asked a private religious institution to help solve a public agency's problem. They had to change negative attitudes both in the black community; which had grown to distrust the state agency, and among a staff suspicious of change who would implement the black adoption program. They had to revamp state laws that inhibited the adoption process. And they had to change bureaucratic procedures that had proven ineffective. The accompanying video exhibit brings to life the successful strategy of the One Church, One Child program, focusing on a presentation in a black church designed to encourage adoptions. In addition, the video includes retrospective comments from the program's administrators and vignettes of families who have adopted children as a result of the program. This case will challenge students to examine the assumptions that limit bureaucracies.
SCHEDULE
Attached is a sample schedule for the Senior Executives in State and Local Government program.
EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE, OUTWARD BOUND, THOMPSON ISLAND
At the end of the first week, students participate in a tailored one-day experiential program at Outward Bound on scenic Thompson Island, part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area. The program is an extension of the previous week's classroom work and addresses the theory and practice of leadership, communication style, and personal, professional and team dynamics.
Through the Outward Bound process, participants are encouraged to examine and challenge their assumptions and reflect on personal practices and learnings. The Outward Bound experience serves as a learning laboratory which creates an opportunity to investigate and compare perspectives and those of colleagues. By the end of the day, participants recognize transference and relevance to their work environments, offering the opportunity to keep the aspects that are functioning well, and to consider changing those less optimal.
The Outward Bound Professional program encourages participants to challenge themselves and each other in a supportive environment.
